Exploring Tennis as a Physical Activty

Choosing a Physical Activity

I’ve never been an athletic person, I’m slow, unfit and terribly uncoordinated. That’s why I’m choosing an activity that will force me to be fast, fit and coordinated, it wont be easy but I have time and I have energy. Doing this is a part of Identifying my own strengths and areas of growth as well as undertaking new challenges to develop new skills ( as per the first two learning outcomes). I decided to do a sport specifically as I hoped that it would allow me to draw on my competitive side, leading to faster more focused improvement. I had three criteria for choosing this sport…

Physically demanding- I wanted to try something that would force me to improve my fitness as I am not a generally active person, thus choosing something like tennis allows me to work on my health as well.

Competitive- I did not want to take part in an activity that felt too singular, running, swimming etc. Activities where your only real challenger is yourself, previously I’ve always found such activities difficult to focus on or become passionate about. While I can appreciate the merits of those sports, I do not believe that they would engage me.

Single player- I wanted a sport that at least for the most part did not require teamwork. This is not because I have anything against teamwork, but at this time every activity I take part in requires a large degree of teamwork and discussion with others, something individually focused would be a welcome break.

Taking into consideration all of these criteria, I had to choose between tennis, wrestling, badminton and squash. Taking into consideration convenience (distance to places that train the above) and preference, I decided on tennis.

With this activity I do hope to learn how to play tennis but at a larger level I hope that it will help me become better at physical activities overall. This has previously been an area of weakness for me personally, that I would like to develop and am confident of being able to.